Makers Make Their Mark at Startup Week

This is Startup Week in Tallahassee. The observance is intended to promote more entrepreneurship and business creativity.

Listen

Listening...

/

0:54

Capital City makers explained their businesses at the TCC Downtown Innovation Center.

Credit Tom Flanigan

One of the occasion's first events took place on Monday (11/13) morning and focused on local small businesses that actually make things. A Capital City mother/daughter team was talking about the popular household do-it-yourself videos they upload to YouTube before a small but entranced audience. David Brightbill, who created the Making Awesome hi-tech workshop, was facilitator for the Makers Town Hall at Tallahassee Community College's Downtown Innovation Center.

"We're asking each person to come and tell us what's good about being a maker and small business person in Tallahassee and what's missing from our eco-system. We're already getting some interesting ideas about that. We're especially honored to have Al Latimer here from the (Leon County) Office of Economic Vitality to listen to the makers. We hope it's the beginning of a dialogue between the small makers and government. That's what we're doing here today."

Startup Week events continue at various venues around town through this Friday.

Related Content

People looking for work in Tallahassee are about to be matched with business mentors in an effort to develop new technologies. The partnerships are part of the statewide StartUp Quest program begun at the University of Florida three years ago.

By the end of the week, Tallahassee’s dozen mentors will receive the names of mentees on their teams. Workforce Plus is facilitating the partnerships between job seekers, business leaders and state universities hoping to see their ideas blossom into tech companies.

From Elon Musk’s SpaceX, to the simple photo sharing app Snapchat, entrepreneurs seem to be making headlines across the nation. Silicon Valley and New York City are two of the best-known hubs for blossoming companies.

Organizers of a unique kind of Tallahassee summer camp insist theirs is the first local effort to combine leadership, money management and business start-up training for teenagers. The program is a joint effort of the Big Bend Minority Chamber of Commerce and Tallahassee-Leon County Federal Credit Union.

WFSU is Public Media, PBS, and NPR for Northern Florida and Southern Georgia